When the triumphal entry was over and evening was closing in, he turned at last to his own home.
One sadness marred the return; Henry Ireton had died in Ireland, worn out by the fatigues of the strenuous campaign which had more than once laid the Lord-General himself on a bed of sickness, and Bridget Ireton was shut into her house, mourning her lord, whose body was being brought home for burial in the Abbey Church at Westminster.
The rest were all there to welcome him; his mother, his wife, his son Richard, now at last wedded to Dorothy Mayor (Henry was still in Ireland, doing good work there), Elisabeth Claypole and her husband, and the two unmarried girls, Mary and Frances.
The women wept, in their enthusiasm and joyful relief. Elisabeth Claypole hung on his breast in a passion of tears, so completely did the sadness of the world overwhelm her sensitive heart in any moment of emotion.
Almost her first words were to ask his kindness towards the poor Irish who were being sent to Jamaica and Barbadoes as slaves. After all Cromwell's victories his favourite daughter's delicate voice had risen with the same appeal: "Be merciful, be pitiful—spare the prisoners!"
"Why do you weep, Betty?" he asked.
"Because she is a foolish wench," said her husband good-humouredly.
"Nay," said Elisabeth Cromwell, "what doth your old poet say—'pity runneth soon in a gentle heart'; and we have had to bear some straining anxieties."
"And we have heard awful reports," murmured Mrs. Claypole, smiling through her tears with that simple archness which her father loved, however he might contemn her carnal mind. "Blood—nothing but blood was spoken of, until my dreams were coloured red."
"Ay," said old Mrs. Cromwell, with the vagueness of her great age. "Hast thou not slain the children of the Scarlet Woman by tens of thousands? I heard that at Drogheda thou didst close the blasphemous idolaters into their own church, and there burn them, as an offering of sweet savour in the nostrils of the Lord."